Our friend who came for dinner works up in London 5 days a week and flies home to the family in Denmark every Friday night. So I guessed that Indian take-away, burgers and steaks would be no-gos. Instead I opted for a all-in-one recipe from Jamie Oliver. It’s pork chops, potatoes, parsnips and pears all nicely marinated and cooked in the oven for 45 minutes. From The Return of the Naked Chef.
With it I served one of my staple dishes, the carrot salad to beat them all. Anybody who’s ever had dinner in my house more than once, will have tried this one :-) It’s from “Lørdags Politiken” (Danish paper), several years ago. Can’t recall the name of the chef, but he was from somewhere in Latin America.
500 gr carrots, in long thin peels
200 gr raisins, soaked in water
juice and finely grated peel of one organic lemon
1 tbs maple syrup
ground contents of 8 cardamom pods
content of ½ vanilla bean
3-4 drops of fish sauce
1 tbs virgin rapeseed oil (don’t use olive oil – rather sunflower or other tasteless oil)
salt & pepper1. Mix all the ingredients save the raisins in mixing bowl
2. Drain the raisins carefully and add them
3. Move to salad bowl and leave to rest for at least ½ hourIt is important that the carrots are peeled lengthwise. When grated the way we normally do, they dry out very quickly and don’t have sufficient surface to soak up the tastes from the other ingredients.
This salad gets better when it’s left to rest for an hour or two. And if you cover it with cling film and put it in the fridge, it is even better on the second day – quite unlike most other salads.
I also made cinnamon rolls – not least because Dane loves them… He sat on the kitchen counter, waiting for them to cool down. And then he ate four, while I was busy doing something else!
I forgot to take a picture of mine, so here’s a picture of somebody else’s:
I’m reading through some of the comments on Barack Obama‘s speach last night. Will share the best with you later!
